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Monthly Archives: January 2012

It’s Friday and though I was under pressure by some (well two) to push #BassFriday a little early I held out. If you’re on Spotify then you can download the playlist here.

1. It Ain’t No Fun To Me – Larry Graham & Graham Central Station

Direct from the man who invented slap bass…. GCS stuff has been slowly catching up with my ears as it was always a bit of 70s Hammond organ for me. Now I love it. Be sure to track down the instructional video Larry did, it’s on Youtube.

2. Beauty and the Mess – Nickel Creek

While the three amazing talents of Sean, Sarah and Chris tear up the bluegrass rulebook and spit it out (possibly on a stranger) Byron House is usually behind the scenes but those double are from sitting in the background. To be honest I could have chosen any track from “This Side” but this is one of my favourites.

3. Never Enough – Adrian Belew

It’s an easy mistake to make, Adrian is an incredible musician as well as stunt guitarist. Always difficult to pick a track though as they’re all good. “Never Enough” though shows that hint of Beatles influence with a lovely double bass part.

4. Lord I Come Before You – Salvador

NSFA (Not Suitable For Atheists :))

I’m actually not too bothered what your take on the lyrics are, whatever floats yer boat as far as I’m concerned. BUT listen to that intro! Josh Gonzales tears up and down the intro and then settles in nicely. Even the Santana-esque guitar solo shines.

5. Coisich, a Ruin – Capercaillie

The early nineties brought a mix of groove and jigs together, with the likes of Altan, Iona, Davy Spillane and the whole Riverdance thing going on it was hard to avoid. Coisich was a high point for me, I’d just never heard this sort of thing before. Sadly for me it never surpassed this.

6. Funky Avocado – Michael Hedges

Sounds like Jaco but it’s not, it’s Michael Manring. “Breakfast In The Field” was an early Hedges album but still stands out as one of the best for me.

7. U Can’t Hold No Groove – Victor Wooten

I have a love/hate relationship with bass player albums. Over indulgent nonsense most of the time, even the jazz ones…. Victor hmmmm yes he’s a bassist’s bassist but he can fit in with anyone too.

8. 5G – Bruford

Yeah we’re hitting the prog areas of life, Jeff Berlin on bass here and for someone who is seemingly against slap bass well he seems to be doing a good job here. So Bill Bruford, Allan Holdsworth, Jeff and Dave Stewart (of Stewart and Gaskin, not the Annie Lennox one) top flight musofest may commence 🙂

9. Soft Machine – Hazard Profile Part 1

And if 5G was prog enough for you then Soft Machine will prog out even further. Is it prog or is it Jazz/Fusion? Roy Babbington playing a Fender VI, we’ll let that go as a bass in this tune, it’s not a guitar it’s not a guitar.

10. Make Them Dance – Defunkt

Highly highly highly underrated band. Kim Clarke is just plain solid and inventive at the same time. If you want one album make sure it’s Thermonuclear Sweat (my copy is still on cassette and I have nothing to play it on 🙂 )

Big Data, the measurement and processing of large sets of data. Some connected and some not, on the vague hope that we might find that one link that opens the world in front of our very eyes.

With the volumes of data that the likes of Facebook, Google and Twitter, not forgetting the copy cat sites and all our interconnected devices…. well that’s a lot of data.

While the argument for the reducing storage costs, cloud computing and distributed systems the hardest part of all of this, putting all the tools aside, is knowing what we want.

Harking back to good project management, and even Prince2, the first question was (and if it wasn’t, should have been) – is there a business case for this project? What are we trying to achieve with all this data we have?

If you can’t ask this question first then please stop and think about it. Chucking every bit of data you have may not be neccessary and end up a costly exercise. You may only need to process 20% of the data you have to get the answers you want, you first need to know the question.

I appreciate that we have all this processing power to hand and Hadoop/MapReduce are brilliant tools but they are tools, not the panacea to BigData, a means to an end but not the end itself.

Questioning our minds first will save work, programming, reviews, reports and various other things instead of jumping in with both feet and processing everything we can get our hands on.

With Cloudatics I set out to enable Hadoop/MapReduce processing but with smaller data sets. BigData doesn’t have to be Big. MediumData works for me too it just doesn’t sounds good in press releases. 🙂

While Trevor Horn produced it was Louis Jardim who played the original bassline. A quick hunt on Youtube and you’ll find Trevor playing bass and Louis playing percussion live in the Prince’s Trust concert.

2. Alanis Morissette – You Oughta Know

This song has a naughty word in it – you have been warned.

Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea played on this track. For me it’s still her best song, maybe that’s ironic….

3. Bruce Cockburn – Tibetan Side Of Town

Putting to one side that Bruce is an amazing guitarist, let’s not forget that Fergus Marsh is, in my eyes, a very underrated but amazing Stick player. One of the rare ones that puts the song first. I never got on with Bruce’s studio albums but the live ones took me to another place.

4. Sylvian/Fripp – God’s Monkey

1993 marked a bit of a golden period where Robert Fripp has his guitar all over the place. The Robert Fripp String Quintet, David Sylvian and then the next chapter of King Crimson. In the background, quitely crafting lines that layered, screamed and held the groove was Trey Gunn.

5. Level 42 – Mr Pink

The instrumental that everyone mentions when you talk about Level 42. The early versions had a lot more room to them, hence I chose one from 1982, actually to let Boon’s guitar come through a bit more.

6. Hue & Cry – Labour Of Love

So two basslines really, a piano and a bass guitar. James Finnigan played for a lot of Hue & Cry’s stuff, live and studio. A few years later was in Stiltskin who landed fame with “Inside” being used on a Levi’s ad. Instant number 1.

7. Faith No More – Epic

So a lot of heavier artists made attempted to stick hard slap basslines within their tunes. Not many did a great job in my opinion (and I don’t class the Spin Doctors as hard rock). Billy Gould on the other hand did a rather splendid job on Epic.

8. Repetition – Tackhead

Originally a song by The Fall but appeared as a B side on Tackhead’s single “Dangerous Sex”, a live favourite as well. Doug Wimbish, say no more. If you ever hear a live version there’s a month’s worth of bass lessons right there.